Tohopeka

Rethinking the Creek War and the War of 1812

Edited by Kathryn E. Holland Braund

Publication Year: 2012

Tohopeka contains a variety of perspectives and uses a wide arrayof evidence and approaches, from scrutiny of cultural and religious practices to literary and linguistic analysis, to illuminate this troubled period.

Almost two hundred years ago, the territory that would become Alabama was both ancient homeland and new frontier where a complex network of allegiances and agendas was playing out. The fabric of that network stretched and frayed as the Creek Civil War of 1813−14 pitted a faction of the Creek nation known as Red Sticks against those Creeks who supported the Creek National Council. The war began in July 1813, when Red Stick rebels were attacked near Burnt Corn Creek by Mississippi militia and settlers from the Tensaw area in a vain attempt to keep the Red Sticks’ ammunition from reaching the main body of disaffected warriors. A retaliatory strike against a fortified settlement owned by Samuel Mims, now called Fort Mims, was a Red Stick victory. The brutality of the assault, in which 250 people were killed, outraged the American public and “Remember Fort Mims” became a national rallying cry.

During the American-British War of 1812, Americans quickly joined the war against the Red Sticks, turning the civil war into a military campaign designed to destroy Creek power. The battles of the Red Sticks have become part of Alabama and American legend and include the famous Canoe Fight, the Battle of Holy Ground, and most significantly, the Battle of Tohopeka (also known as Horseshoe Bend)—the final great battle of the war. There, an American army crushed Creek resistance and made a national hero of Andrew Jackson.

New attention to material culture and documentary and archaeological records fills in details, adds new information, and helps disabuse the reader of outdated interpretations.

List of Illustrations

Foreword A Deliberate Passion Creating and Commemorating
the First National Park in Alabama

Horseshoe Bend is one of only four National Park Service units primarily
focused on the period of the War of 1812. It is the only national park unit
east of the Mississippi that commemorates a battle between US and American
Indian forces. It is the site of the highest loss of American
Indian life in
a single battle in US history...

Preface

Almost two hundred years ago, the territory that would become Alabama
was both ancient homeland and new frontier. In its forests and meadowlands,
along its creeks and rivers, in its towns and forts and wilderness, a
complex network of allegiances and agendas were playing out. In the early
1800s, the fabric of that...

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Ove Jensen, my friend and ally in this endeavor, for his
vision and unwavering determination to bring historical scholarship and the
public
together. Ove’s zeal and devotion to Horseshoe Bend National Military
Park inspired me from the moment we first met and his continuing service
to one of the Creek people’s most...

Introduction

As the corn was ripening in July 1813, the Creek people were engulfed by
what Benjamin Hawkins termed a “rage of Frenzy.”1 Hawkins, who served
as the United States’ representative to the Creeks, might better have described
it as a frenzy of rage, and a good deal of it was of his own making.
Hawkins
seemed oblivious to the...

1. Causalities and Consequences of the Creek War: A Modern Creek Perspective

The Creek War of 1813–1814 began as a civil war between two factions within
the Creek Confederacy. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,
Euro-American
influences and encroachments were producing profound
changes in the culture of...

2. Thinking outside the Circle: Tecumseh’s 1811 Mission

According to long-standing conventions, challenged but not overthrown in
the late twentieth century, Tecumseh’s 1811 visit was a revolutionary departure
from traditional tribal thinking, was that of a secular statesman who
at some level stood apart from his brother’s spiritual movement, and was
echoed by earthquakes...

The Creek War is commonly said to have begun with the Battle of Burnt
Corn, a surprise attack by Mississippi territorial militia on a party of Red
Stick Creeks that ended in an unexpected defeat of the attackers. The battle
is conventionally understood to have raised Red Stick expectations of victory...

4. Red Sticks

In July 1813, Creek agent Benjamin Hawkins sent a talk to the Creek Indians,
whom he feared were aggrieved to the point of war, noting, “I hear
you are preparing yourselves for war. I hear you have taken part with the
prophets.
. . . I hear you have begun the war dance, made your war clubs,
and are for war with the white people...

5. Before Horseshoe: Andrew Jackson’s Campaigns in the Creek War Prior to Horseshoe Bend

An anxious Andrew Jackson, writing hurriedly to his wife from Fort Strother
in early March 1814, told her he was “buried in preparations for a movement
from this place,” a movement he promised would “put a speedy end to the
Creek war.” “As soon as it is done,” he vowed, “I shall without delay return
to your arms.”1 Absent from...

6. Cherokees in the Creek War: A Band of Brothers

In July 1813, civil war erupted among the Creeks, southern
neighbors of the
Cherokees. A disaffected faction labeled as the Red Sticks opposed the increasing
US influence in the Creek National Council and its usurpation of
clan authority. Although the Cherokees had often considered the Creeks as
enemies, many had fought...

7. Horseshoe Bend: A Living Memorial

Horseshoe Bend National Military Park is one of 392 units in the National
Park System and one of only two dozen battlefield or military parks. It is the
only national military park in Alabama. The 2,040-acre
park receives some
fifty to sixty thousand visitors annually. Most people come to enjoy the serene
landscape, view wildlife...

8. Fort Jackson and the Aftermath

The battle at the Horseshoe on March 27, 1814, is almost invariably described
as the end of the Creek War, the final climactic act of an exceptionally violent
though—at barely seven months—brief conflict between the United
States and a large segment of the Creek Nation. In its immediate aftermath,...

9. “We Bleed Our Enemies in Such Cases to Give Them Their Senses”: Americans’ Unrelenting Wars on the Indians of the Trans-Appalachian West, 1810–1814

This chapter addresses the unrelenting wars that Americans
waged in the
early 1810s against the Indians of the trans-A
ppalachian West. Two major
Indian conflicts—the Northwest Indian War of 1810–1813 and the Red Stick
War of 1813–1814—wracked the trans-Appalachian frontier preceding and
concurrent with the War of 1812. At the...

10. “Where All Behave Well”: Fort Bowyer and the War on the Gulf,1814–1815

In the predawn twilight of February 8, 1815, Lieutenant Colonel William
Lawrence awoke to a troubling tableau. He stared intently into the fading
darkness from the ramparts of Fort Bowyer out at the gray waters of the
Gulf of Mexico. There was movement to the west and the south, and the
rising sun soon revealed an alarming...

11. Archaeology, Geography, and the Creek War in Alabama

This chapter is a brief survey of geographical and archaeological information
relating to the Creek War during the period between the Battle of Burnt
Corn ( July 27, 1813) and the Treaty of Fort Jackson (August 9, 1814). My particular
focus is on the Upper...

12. Digging Twice: Camps and Historical Sites Associated with the Warof 1812 and the Creek War of 1813–1814 - James W. Parker

Archaeological sites related to the US war effort in the Creek War during
the era of the War of 1812 are scattered across Alabama as well as neighboring
states. Beginning in 1996, the US National Park Service, consultants, and
state agencies conducted surveys and worked to identify the most important
sites of the conflicts (there are two) as part...

Afterword: The Western Muscogee (Creek) Perspective

As a Muscogee (Creek) citizen and member of the Wind clan from the Tulmuchusee
tribal town and an adopted member of the Hillabee ceremonial
ground, my goal is to present the western Creek perspective of this history
that is so important to us. What I did was listen...

Appendix I: Current Preservation Status of Major Creek War / War of 1812 Sites in Alabama

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